Food Blogs are an Amazing Source of Free Recipes

Earlier this month I posted about how I organize my recipes. Most of mine at this time are from cookbooks, but if you want to be more frugal and you don’t want to pay for cookbooks or cooking magazines or if you want to be more green and not consume the paper they require, then you’ll find food blogs to be an amazing free source of recipes that you can make right off your computer screen rather than printing them out (I do recommend washing and drying your hands first if you need to touch the computer while cooking).

To keep up with all the best food blogs I am an RSS subscriber to Tastespotting. Tastespotting displays pictures of each dish and a very short description, if you’re interested in reading more about the item, you can click on the picture and be taken to the source blog which usually contains the recipe. I use NewsGator as my RSS client which allows me to keep track of which items I’ve already looked at and “clip” my favorites for later. Using an RSS client is an absolute must if you’re interested in reading blogs because it helps you keep up with a large number in an organized manner.

When I find items I like on Tastespotting, I click on the pictures to go to the source blogs and if I like those blogs I subscribe to their RSS feeds too (I’m typically only interested in blogs with full feeds so I can easily “clip” the recipe and find it again later). Once I clip a recipe, I put the title into my computerized recipe index followed by the url of the blog I found it on. NewsGator also allows me to make folders for my clippings so I can put them all in one food folder and then have subfolders for categories like chicken, vegetables, and desserts.

Allow me to share a few of my recent top food blog recipe finds (I haven’t made any of these yet but they’re all on the list and available as meal planning options):